How to swing a sword?

Titaggg wrote: »

Hello everyone!
On my previous post many of you suggested to seriously start weight lifting and so I began, following some simple and progressive plans I found on the internet.

I read that there are different "ways" to weigh lift. Like 5x5 or 15x3 or until exhaustion. I'm not sure what should be the best plan for me for body recomposition.

Pick a plan and follow it, to the letter. Established plans tend to talk a little about the pace/speed of a lift but when they don't that is becuse the speed of movement is much, much less important than moving the weight the specified number of times (reps) and sets.

Titaggg wrote: »

So the question is: what kind of weight lifting should I do to manage this sword swinging? Should I use heavier weights and do less reps, or a lot of reps and lighter weights?

Any of the beginner programs (especially barbell programs involving deadlifts) will quickly increase grip strength*, shoulder and core strength (which I'm guessing are the most important areas for heavy sword use - although full body improvement is what you should be striving for)

* When lifting do not use wrist straps to help with grip - you need to train your grip, straps will limit progression in this area.

Titaggg wrote: »

Should I lift quickly or slowly?
I want to improve strenght and also "energy" and speed.

Fast or slow - Whatever it takes to move the weight. As you get stronger you will then have more control over the sword and so will be able to move it quicker/slower/with more accuracy.

It's also worth pointing out that in order to develop the strength and skills required to perform well in a sport, practicing that sport often is, arguably, the best tactic. Cross-training (training in another discipline to improve performance in your chosen discipline) is important and can help in progression and minimize over training but if you want to be a better high jumper, you high jump -a lot. In your case the weight training would appear to be your cross training to help you get better at sword-fighting. So, you should be doing a lot of sword-fighting and sword-fighting drills.

Finally, if you want to get stronger quickly, calories are your friend. There is much strength gain to be had from neuro-muscular adaptation (better muscle recruitment during exercise) but once you've made all the gains possible in that area (and you've been sword-fighting for a year now so I would expect that this is the situation that you're in) the only way you're going to get stronger is by building more muscle. That is going to be slow to impossible on a calorific deficit. To grow you need an excess. So eat up.

I thought that medieval swordsmansip was mostly two handed as opposed to fencing which is one handed.

rybo wrote: »

If you aren't strong enough to hold/swing a sword, ANY strength training is going to help. Pick a solid overall plan, there are many and follow it. I would pick something with reps in the 5-15 range, so that should give you lots of options. Also have you ever thought of mace training. Google it if you don't know. Seems like there would be lots of transfer.

+1 for mace training. An excellent suggestion.

I recommend setting up a punching bag or some kind of dummy and, like someone mentioned earlier, training with actual sword swinging. I think you're looking at a lot of grip strength and forearm strength so working with some good grips (look up Captains of Crush) and other forearm exercises could help.

For training against a dummy or punching bag, look into getting a Hanwei Practical Knightly Sword from Kult of Athena. It's nice and heavy so would give you some good weight to train with.

I used to be in ARMA which was Renaissance martial arts and our standard weapon was the 2-handed long sword. That stuff is great fun.

I just read this article and I think it has a lot of good points concerning your situation:

https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/perspectives/just-get-strong-is-wrong/

to cut a long story short it re-enforces the message that you need to train with the sword and consider your other training in that context. I guess, reading back my original reply that this would mean focus more on sword training and much less on the strength, barbell work.

Beats me, but maybe they have something like this where you are (I keep getting Groupon offers for it): http://www.fortezafitness.com/

Through the study of Armizare, you will learn:

A 600 year old fighting art, tested on the battlefield by generations of medieval warriors;
A solid foundation in natural, elegant movement and universal body mechanics;
How to wield a wide variety of swords, daggers and polearms, in and out of armour;
Combative integration – learn how to move from weapon range to grappling range, and how to fight with and against diverse weapons in dissimilar combat scenarios;
The evolution of the many tools in the knightly arsenal;
The history of our tradition and the stories of its most famous (and infamous) students;
The ethical system of chivalry, in theory vs. practice, and its evolution over time.

Forteza is the home studio of the Chicago Swordplay Guild, an internationally renowned organization that offers two distinct tracks of historical fighting arts from Medieval and Renaissance Italy (1350 – 1650). Ranking is based on a traditional system of licensing used by fighting guilds found throughout late medieval Europe.

Nothing to add other than: medieval sword fighting? That's freaking awesome!

I don't know much about weights but maybe you can focus on technique with a lighter sword to start, like a foil or sabre? I used to fence (primarily foil) and I remember that having the right technique, even when it came to the stance and leg movements, made a big difference on how well I was able to control my arms. Our instructor had us focus a lot on our core to improve balance and control overall, so in addition to weights, pilates might be something to look into. Also, doing repetitions of lunges even without anything in your hands (or maybe use a small, 5 lb weight) can help improve balance when you're moving into and out of the lunge position.

so definitely strength training. depends on what you want. weights, body weight, whatever.
you'll want to work on endurance too. maybe take up swinging poi or staff